True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
Alexander Pope, ‘An Essay on Criticism’
The aim of this section is to identify and discuss the characteristics of good writing. It is not intended simply as an abstract discussion. At the end of chapter 7, the step-by-step account of the writing process had reached the revision stage. Once the essential qualities of good writing have been established, they can be used as a set of basic principles to guide a writer when he or she is revising a piece of work.
The general heading for this chapter is ‘Style’, one of the words most commonly used in discussions of the art or business of writing. According to The New Penguin English Dictionary ‘style’, among its many senses, means ‘a distinctive or characteristic manner of doing something’ and ‘a manner of expression in writing, painting, music, etc., esp when characteristic of an individual, period, etc.’. The emphasis in both these definitions is on individuality and distinctiveness. Style is essentially a personal thing, something peculiar to each individual. As you are, so you write. Personality will out. And this is true. Each one of us, writing at whatever level, does have his or her own personal way of using words.
At the same time, however, when people talk about ‘good style’ they are usually referring to something more general. The rules of style attempt to define the characteristics that are typical of all good and effective writing. If style were an individual characteristic only, a person would be born stylish or unstylish and that would be that. In order to achieve a valid style all the writer would have to do would be to listen carefully to his or her inner voice and follow it faithfully.
Nothing in the real world is ever that simple or that subjective. But there is sufficient tension between the individual and the general in the concept of style to warrant a brief discussion of some questions relating to style as such, before the topic of the qualities that distinguish a good style is addressed.
Yes, it can. Having a tidy, logical mind and being careful and self-critical by nature helps to produce good-quality writing, just as it helps to have a vivid and offbeat imagination to write a fantasy novel. But just as you can train yourself into and out of certain patterns of behaviour, so you can also train yourself into and out of particular ways of thinking and writing.
Like any other art, writing is learnt by doing and by looking at what others have already done. Practise writing and also practise reading, but not simply this book or other books on the craft of writing. Read widely, especially in the type of writing that you want to do yourself, but above all read carefully. And, where appropriate, copy what other people have done. Someone who is learning to paint can obviously learn much more by trying to copy a Rembrandt exactly than a would-be writer can by copying out large chunks of Shakespeare word for word. But many dramatists have learnt from Shakespeare how to structure dialogue or a scene, just as many politicians have tried, admittedly with varying degrees of success, to learn from Winston Churchill on how to address the nation in times of trouble. The point of copying is always to learn a technique and move on to use it for yourself. You should rightly shrink from copying whole sentences or paragraphs from a source. It is possible, however, by reading carefully, to recognize a technique in the abstract and separate it from its encapsulation in a particular form of words. Succeed in doing that, and you can reuse the basic pattern with a good conscience in your own work.
When trying to describe the writing process step by step, it is quite easy to give the impression that style is something additional to the text. It is sometimes presented as if it were an extra decorative or finishing layer on top, as if the actual message were the floor and its style were the ornate carpet laid over it. If that were so, then style would be only on the surface and the reader could reverse the process and roll away the covering to reveal the rough boards underneath. It is sometimes necessary for readers to go through some such process when writers ‘dress up’ their ideas in fancy language. The idea of style as an additional layer is, however, fundamentally misleading.
To begin with, the process of revising in general or ‘revising for style’ often means taking away rather than adding. It is probably more common to use too many words and to express yourself in too roundabout a way than to be unnecessarily terse. The stylish version may be something that is hidden inside the rough version and only revealed by pruning away the excess.
The metaphor of ‘polishing’, which is a long-time favourite with writers on the art of writing, is a better one, so long as the polish is not thought of as an extra layer, but as a means of bringing out the essential qualities of what is already there. A polished floor is still made of wood; it is wood, as it were, made good. In the same way, what is called ‘good style’ in writing should not, ideally, be separable from the message or content. The poet and writer on style, Alexander Pope, knew this in the eighteenth century:
But true Expression, like th’ unchanging Sun,
Clears, and improves whate’er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Style should not be separable from the individual’s way of putting the message across either. This is where the individual and general aspects in the concept of style are reconciled. The rules of style are not intended as a means of stifling self-expression, but as a means of enhancing it. It takes time and effort to bring out the best in particular pieces of writing. It takes even more time, effort, and practice to develop style as a personal attribute that will ‘gild’ every piece of writing to which you turn your hand. But such effort is worthwhile.
The general notion of what constitutes a good writing style has probably not changed greatly over the centuries – at least, in English, not since the latter part of the seventeenth century. The same qualities characterize good style in the twenty-first century as in preceding ones: they are clarity, simplicity, economy, variety, vigour, and suitability.
Clarity takes precedence for the reason that successful communication depends on the reader being able to receive the writer’s message without undue effort. As has been said before, clarity depends to a large extent on knowing what you want to say and carefully preparing how you are going to say it. It also depends on a knowledge of basic grammar. Ambiguity arises as often from incorrect or sloppy grammar as from an unfortunate choice of words. Grammar is an agreed framework. The reader will expect sentences to fit together in the usual way and to be decodable according to the normal rules. If this expectation is not fulfilled, then the message may not be properly understood. But a correct grammatical structure is only the basis for clear expression. Clarity needs to be a guiding light in the choice of words and choice of tone as well.
Simplicity is usually the best means to achieve clarity. In case simplicity should seem a somewhat low-grade virtue, it is worth pointing out that it is generally reckoned to be much harder to write simply and elegantly than to write pretentiously and impenetrably – especially on a difficult subject. In fact, it is frequently suggested that the more difficult and complex the subject, the more you need to make the effort to write simply. Anyone who has struggled to make sense of the operating instructions for a piece of technical equipment will surely agree with that.
Economy is a further courtesy paid by the writer to the reader. Economize on words to save readers’ time. What has been clearly thought out should usually be expressible in few words. But economy is an aesthetic virtue as well. There are no words in the English language that have the meaning ‘using a great many words’ and that are also terms of praise.
Successful communication also demands the reader’s attention is held. The riveting nature of what you have to say, when clearly, simply, and economically expressed, will, you hope, do that by itself. But variety in the choice of vocabulary, in the length and shape of sentences and paragraphs, and sometimes in the tone you adopt with the reader, helps enormously.
Vigour has a great deal to do with personal involvement. It is not always possible or even desirable for writing to leap off the page, but limp, lacklustre prose that has seemingly crept onto the page in order to die there is unacceptable. Even dignified, formal, and conventional writing can accommodate some rhythm and life.
You praise the firm restraint with which they write—
I’m with you there, of course:
They use the snaffle and the curb all right,
But where’s the bloody horse?
Roy Campbell ‘On Some South African Novelists’
Word choice and sentence structure again come into play, but putting ‘the horse’ in your writing also has a lot to do with keeping in touch with your personal voice and allowing an element of conversational style to show through.
It is possible to imagine occasions on which one or other of these five qualities might not be a virtue. For most normal purposes, however, writing which is clear, simple, and concise, but also varied and lively, is good writing. To cover exceptional cases, a final overall quality might be added, that of suitability. The reader has to be kept in mind at all times. What you write should be adjusted, as far as possible, to suit the reader’s capacity to understand, his or her interests and existing knowledge, and your relationship with him or her.
Recognizing the qualities that make for a good style is one thing, realizing them is another. The all-important question of how to write with style will, for the sake of convenience, be considered under four main headings. Three of them correspond to the units that make up all writing: words (below), sentences (p. 222), and paragraphs (p. 229). The fourth deals with the somewhat more elusive matter of tone (p. 216).
The right word or expression on every occasion is the one that expresses the writer’s meaning most clearly, simply, and concisely and that has sufficient force to convey any emotion attaching to what he or she has to say. This much follows from everything that has been said before. English, however, has a massive vocabulary. Chapter 3 on Vocabulary in the first part of this book contains a brief discussion of the history of the English language and explains how it came to be particularly rich in synonyms, that is, different words that have a similar meaning. Where there is a choice between a number of different words or expressions, any of which would express a meaning more or less adequately, how do you arrive at a decision? There are various criteria.
Generally speaking, where two words offer themselves for consideration, one a simple everyday term and the other a longer or more complicated one, the right word to choose is the simpler one.
What, it might reasonably be asked, is wrong with long words? It sometimes seems difficult to find anyone who writes about writing who has a good word to say for anything over three syllables. Many manuals on writing provide lists of terms to avoid (accordingly when used instead of so, ascertain used for find out, erroneous for wrong, implementation for carrying out, and many more). At the same time, however, a recent survey (September 2000) has voted serendipity, a word of six syllables, the favourite word in the English language – among British people who took part in the survey, at least. According to The New Penguin English Dictionary serendipity is ‘the faculty of discovering pleasing or valuable things by chance’. Why this word was chosen is clear. It is a delightful, quaint, rather musical word expressing a charming idea, apparently denoting a factor that many people see as playing a major part in their own lives.
Writers on style and related matters run the risk of sounding like linguistic puritans and killjoys. Isn’t it part of the fun of writing to use long, unusual words? Ought not the expressive powers of English be relished? Isn’t a good mouth-filling word something to rejoice in especially? Serendipity and prestidigitation and the word T. S. Eliot chose to start one of his (shorter and lesser) poems polyphiloprogenitive, not to mention supercalifragilisticexpialidotious.
Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls’ [College, Oxford], avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. One evening, [T. E.] Lawrence returned from a visit to London, and Edgeworth met him at the gate. ‘Was it very caliginous in the Metropolis?’
‘Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inspissated,’ Lawrence replied gravely.
Robert Graves Goodbye to All That
If Professor Edgeworth had simply asked ‘Was it foggy in London?’ and T. E. Lawrence had merely replied ‘Quite foggy, but not exactly a pea-souper’ there would have been no story to tell.
Everyone would be the poorer without the quaint rough music of tortuous words and the strange regions of human activity and thought that they lead to. But it is a question of keeping things in proportion. Long words are often fun in themselves and a source of humour or wonder. More than that, especially in the higher reaches of particular disciplines, a longer word is often the only word. There are, probably, no simpler synonyms for aeromagnetometer (a measuring instrument), hyperparathyroidism (a medical condition), or thigmotactically (in relation to responses to touch stimuli). If these were the words that were needed and that fitted the context, then you would be perfectly justified in using them. But, at the same time, you would have to take into account the number of readers you were excluding from a full understanding of the text by using them without an accompanying explanation.
Where the word that correctly describes or expresses something is a long one, then it should be used. Nevertheless, where there is a choice, as a general rule and when your intentions are serious and practical rather than humorous or extravagant, the choice should be in favour of the simpler term.
What then are the virtues of short, simple words and why are they usually said to be more effective than long complicated ones? For a start, they are part of almost everyone’s vocabulary. It is not a good idea to send a reader off to consult a dictionary every five minutes. It breaks his or her concentration, and if a reader does not bother to look up the word in question then a significant part of the message may not be communicated.
Simple words are clear and direct. They suggest that the writer knows what he or she is doing. Instead of being a sign of great cleverness and sophistication, the use of long words can sometimes be seen as a cover for a lack of clear thinking and careful preparation. Simplicity is often a sign of self-confidence, whereas people who use many long words are, it may be felt, setting out to impress and must have something to prove.
Simpler words are generally more concrete than longer ones. They suggest something specific to the imagination. The words rain, fog, hail, sunshine, etc., call up particular pictures in the mind based on experience. The phrase weather conditions does no such thing. It covers everything – that is its virtue, it might be said – but the choice of such a phrase suggests nothing in particular, and that is its weakness.
Finally, at least since the days of George Orwell’s famous essay on Politics and the English Language (which was referred to also in the chapter on Vocabulary), the use of vague, generalized terminology has also been associated with having something to hide. The masking effect of terms such as collateral damage and liquidate has already been mentioned (p. 128). It does not take people long to see through the euphemistic phrasing to the unpalatable reality underneath. But if a writer’s purpose is not to mislead but to present a case directly and forcefully, it is wise to avoid the type of vocabulary favoured by those who wish to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
All of this does not mean that everything has to be written in monosyllables. There is a the-fat-cat-sat-on-the-mat style of writing in some types of literature which, in the long run, seems just as affected as one in which every second word has six or more syllables. People do not like the feeling that they are being talked down to any more than the feeling that they are being blinded with science. There has to be a balance – but with a preference for simpler words where possible.
An example will perhaps help to make the point. If the instructions for returning a piece of equipment to the manufacturer contain a sentence such as the following:
Please endeavour to ensure that a container of suitable size is available to accommodate the machine together with the requisite amount of packaging material of sufficient durability to protect it in transit.
then the reader would surely be justified in thinking that the writer was making excessive use of longer words. Why choose words like endeavour, accommodate, requisite, and durability, when there are simpler and plainer alternatives to hand? The longer words add a spurious air of importance to what is basically a simple instruction or piece of advice:
Please make sure you have a big enough box to put the machine in and enough strong packing material to keep it safe in transit.
Notice too that one long word somehow seems to draw on another. Starting with ‘endeavour’ makes it more likely that other multisyllable terms and wordy phrases will be used. Consistency of tone is generally a very desirable thing, but the tone should start off at the right level.
Why, it might be asked, should anyone choose to write this message in the former style when it could just as easily be written in the latter? It seems to happen quite often. It may be that, in the modern world where voice communication is the norm, any act of writing is seen as formal and thus inevitably demands a more elevated vocabulary than might be used, say, over the telephone. It may seem more respectful to the reader or more professional on the writer’s own part to adopt a rather impersonal, lofty tone. More will be said on this subject later. For the moment it is enough to say again that simple language and a straightforward approach are not in the least unsuitable for written communications. They do not sound impolite; in fact most readers will appreciate being written to by someone who has his or her feet on the ground and expects them to have their feet in the same place.
Another reason to express caution in the use of longer words is that they tend to create a distance between the reader and the writer, and also between both the reader and the writer and reality. This is particularly the case with abstract nouns.
Abstract nouns – nouns which describe qualities or processes and frequently end in suffixes such as -ance, -ity, -ness, or -tion – are by definition general and non-concrete. It is obviously untrue to say that you cannot experience the qualities or processes denoted by abstract nouns. ‘Kindness’, ‘generosity’, and ‘frustration’ are all abstract nouns and represent things that most people have no difficulty relating to. But the tendency of abstract nouns, when used too lavishly, is to lift things out of the realm of the tangible into a world of shadowy generalities.
The following serve as examples of complex abstract expressions that have been simplified. They are taken from Trent Buses’ driving manual, which was rewritten in 2000 by Guy Gibson, its training officer, to the acclaim of the Plain English Campaign:
Before: Ensure location factors and conditions in which manoeuvres are to occur are considered with regard to safety, minimal disruption to other road users, residents, legal constraints and regulatory requirements.
After: Look where you are going, check mirrors, etc.
Before: Ensure the vehicle is effectively manoeuvred to change direction.
After: Turn the steering wheel when you reach a bend.
Before: Ensure awareness and anticipation of other road users in the vicinity of the manoeuvre is maintained.
After: Look where you’re going.
Before: Ensure vehicle is started from and stopped at a designated point.
After: Use the bus stops.
Here is a brief list of words that are often decried as being unnecessarily complex, together with some simpler equivalents.
Complex |
Simple |
accede to |
allow, grant |
accordingly |
so |
accustomed to |
used to |
acknowledge |
thank someone for |
acquaint oneself with |
find out about, get to know |
acquiesce |
agree |
additional |
more, extra |
address (an issue) |
deal with, tackle |
advise |
inform, tell |
affirmative |
yes |
aggregate |
total |
alleviate |
lessen, reduce, ease |
allocate |
assign |
append |
add, attach |
apprise |
inform, tell |
ascertain |
find out, see |
authenticate |
prove |
calculate |
work out |
cognizant of |
aware of |
commence |
start, begin |
concept |
idea |
conceptualize |
imagine |
concerning |
about |
constitute |
form, make up |
determine |
find out, decide |
detrimental |
harmful |
disburse |
spend |
discontinue |
end, stop |
dispatch (despatch) |
send |
elucidate |
explain |
endeavour |
try |
envisage |
expect |
equitable |
fair, just |
erroneous |
wrong, mistaken |
establish |
set up, create, find out, work out |
eventuate |
result, come out |
evince |
show, display |
expedite |
speed up |
expiration |
end |
facilitate |
help, make something easier |
failure to |
if you do not |
functionality |
what something can do |
furnish |
give, provide, supply |
herewith |
with this |
hitherto |
up to now |
impart |
give, pass on |
implement |
carry out, do, put into effect |
increment |
rise, increase, step |
initiate |
begin, start, prompt |
in lieu of |
instead of |
institute |
begin, start |
instrumentality |
means |
manifest |
show |
necessitate |
need, make necessary |
notwithstanding |
even if, despite, still, yet |
obtain |
get |
peruse |
read, study |
principal |
chief, main |
prior to |
before |
purchase |
buy |
purport |
claim, pretend |
regarding |
about |
reimburse |
pay, pay back |
relinquish |
give up |
remittance |
payment |
remuneration |
pay, salary, wages |
repercussion |
effect, results |
request |
ask |
requisite |
needed, required |
reside |
live |
residence |
home, address |
stipulate |
lay down |
sufficient |
enough |
supplement |
add to |
supplementary |
extra, more |
terminate |
end, stop |
thereafter |
afterwards |
utilize |
use |
verify |
check |
The fact that a word appears in the complex column is not equivalent to saying that it is a bad word and ought not to be used at all. But if your writing contains too many words of that type, then it may sound over-formal or pompous.
Jargon is private language, the language of an in-group. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with jargon when it is confined to communication between the members of a particular group. If a doctor writes a prescription to be made up by a pharmacist, a few scrawled scientific abbreviations may be all that is needed to get the message across. Likewise a doctor discussing a case with a colleague might well do so using a Latinate technical language which means very little to someone outside the medical profession. When the doctor has to explain either a prescription or a condition to a patient, he or she must, however, use different and simpler language in order to be understood.
It might be assumed that it is easier to use everyday words rather than technical terms to discuss things. Unfortunately, this is not the case. People become entrenched in their own particular spheres of activity. They take it so much for granted that their world is everyone’s world that they are often unable to make the leap of imagination required to realize that outsiders do not operate within the same linguistic environment as they do and so cannot understand what they are talking about.
A private language is not necessarily made up mostly of long, unusual and technical terms. Here, for example, is a piece of jargon from the Internet:
A Sole Grind is another of the basic grinds that any skater needs to know how to do. Essentially, you are grinding on the bottom of your boot, next to your frame, and in between the two middle wheels of your other skate. Like with the other grinds, practising to stall before grinding is always helpful. You will want most of your weight on your sole foot. It might be helpful to skate alongside the kerb and lock your sole foot onto the kerb and grind the kerb with one skate while rolling on the other skate.
The jargon words in this case are very ordinary simple words used in a specialized sense. Other online skaters visiting the site presumably know what a grind is, how you stall on a skate and which foot is your sole foot. Outsiders who are not familiar with this basic vocabulary have only a very rough idea of what is going on (e.g. grinding is sliding on the frame of the skate rather than on the wheels).
The same problem can be encountered in almost any specialist kind of publication. If, as a writer, you happen to be writing only for other professionals or specialists, then you are free to use the specialist terminology that only they will properly understand. If not, then in choosing words you need to be particularly aware of the reader and of the possible limitations of his or her understanding of the subject. If you need to use a term that the lay person is likely to be unfamiliar with, then you should give guidance when introducing it by, for example, fitting in a brief definition in simple language or spelling out the full form of an acronym: Insert the Scart plug (a plug with two rows of small pins) into the socket in the back of the VCR (video cassette recorder)… Finally, if you are unsure whether something is jargon or not, you should ask someone from outside your own profession or sphere of interest to check it.
In making an effort to keep things simple and remain safely within the limits of what your reader is familiar with, it is all too easy perhaps to fall into using clichés. A cliché is a hackneyed, well-worn phrase or expression. For example:
At the end of the day, it’s a game of two halves and when the chips are down and their backs are against the wall they can always be relied on to pull something out of the bag.
At some time or other, usually in the long-distant past, clichés were picturesque new ways of saying something. Unfortunately, they have become victims of their own success. Too many people have used them and as a result they have become stale and rather ridiculous. George Orwell (see Politics and the English Language again) is particularly hard on users of clichés, describing them as a sort of reach-me-down for the lazy writer and a substitute for thinking. It is as if, by using a cliché, you were saying to the reader, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t be bothered to decide precisely what I mean or think of an original way of saying it, so, here, have this ready-made phrase instead.’
Many clichés are figurative expressions. Orwell’s particular hates in the 1930s were ‘explore every avenue’ and ‘leave no stone unturned’. The fact that these two venerable favourites are still with us is a sign, perhaps, of how limited the effectiveness of even the most eminent writers on language questions actually is. On the other hand, the fact that they are figurative would suggest that by remaining with direct and simple language they can be avoided. Someone who says or writes ‘We shall do everything we can’ is perhaps more likely to be believed than someone who asserts that ‘We shall leave no stone unturned.’ Likewise, people perhaps react more positively to someone who declares that ‘They play better when they’re losing’ than to someone who parrots, ‘They come out fighting when their backs are against the wall.’
Here are a few more expressions that now sound very corny and should only be used tongue-in-cheek in serious writing:
a ballpark figure
a quantum leap
at the end of the day
at this juncture
at this moment in time
at this point in time
because you’re worth it
in this day and age
it’s a whole new ball game
no gain without pain
put something on the back burner
take on board
the bottom line is…
when it comes to the crunch…
when push comes to shove
when the chips are down
whichever way you slice it
Most of these phrases come originally from American English. America is as inventive and productive linguistically as it is in most other ways. The average British person nowadays requires some understanding of American idiom in order to follow the dialogue in films and television programmes produced in the USA. It is inevitable and quite right that some American words and expressions should be adopted into British English, even though you have to go a long way in the UK to see an actual ballpark. But the vanguard position and perceived superior vibrancy of American culture, business, and street life mean that Americanisms often come in as buzz words and end up as clichés. When writing in Britain for an ordinary British audience, treat anything that very obviously betrays its American origins with care.
Buzz words – new words, or old words with a new meaning, that all the smarter people seem to be using at a particular time – present a slightly different risk. It is the same with buzz words as with any other new invention: the rate of uptake is different among different sections of the population. Some adventurous people immediately seize on them and start talking with abandon about networking, cascading, or empowerment while the mass of the general public still has very little idea of what these words exactly mean. Gradually, everyone else catches up and the new word or sense may in time enter the established vocabulary of the language. Dictionaries are revised and reissued much more frequently nowadays than previously and their dust jackets are frequently resplendent with many of the new words that the user will find inside. But by then the caravan has moved on, and the really smart people are saying something else.
For ordinary purposes, therefore, buzz words or any new words need to be used with care and treated more or less as if they were a form of jargon, which indeed they are. If you are not certain that your reader will understand, choose another way of putting what you have to say. Remember also that buzz words – like slang – tend to date and therefore to date the person who uses them.
There is a difference between informal or colloquial language and slang. Informal language is essentially the language of everyday casual speech:
You peel the spuds and I’ll do the rest of the veg.
There’s nothing on the telly tonight, so why don’t we get a video?
Jane says she cant make Thursday, hut would Friday he OK?
It is characterized by the use of contracted forms of the commonest verbs (I’ll, he’s, can’t, don’t, etc.), of all-purpose verbs such as do and get, and of familiar terms for common objects that are often shortenings of the full form (veg, telly). It is homely rather than racy and the familiar terms it uses are not particularly modern. Most ordinary speakers of the language will know them.
Because informal language is primarily a spoken form, the scope for using it in writing is limited. It inevitably carries with it the tone of casual conversation. Consequently it is only really appropriate when the relationship between writer and reader and the context in which communication takes place allow a high degree of familiarity. It is fine in a letter to a friend or in an internal memorandum to a close colleague; it is likely to be out of place in a business letter, an essay, or a report. But, it may be suggested, it is obvious that you should not write words like spud or telly most of the time, but does the same really apply to can’t and don’t and to verbs like do and get?
This is a matter for judgment. The usual convention in writing is to write verbs out in full – you will, he does not. It is safer to stick to that convention, except again when writing to friends.
People often are – or at least used to be – told at school to avoid all-purpose verbs and in particular not to use get. A blanket ban, however, makes little sense. Nothing is gained by writing as I become older in place of as I get older, in fact the former seems stilted. A sequence such as I get up, get washed, get dressed, get into the car, get to work and get down to the task in hand is extremely unlikely to occur in real life but shows how all-pervasive get is in modern English – and how indispensable in many contexts. You could write I rise, wash, dress, enter the car… but, here again, while wash and dress are neat and perfectly acceptable, to replace I get up with I rise would seem pompous in the vast majority of contexts, as would I enter the car. Where get or an extended form of it such as get up or get down to is the natural verb to use, then it should be used. In the context of a formal letter of application for a job writing a sentence such as ‘I did English at Exeter University and got a second-class degree’ sounds rather casual. The fuller verbs studied or read English and was awarded a degree might well be preferable.
Slang is a degree lower in the scale of formality than colloquial English and usually far less universal. On both these counts it is best not used at all in ordinary writing. Technical slang, the humorous or familiar words coined by members of a profession for the objects and procedures they use daily, is subject to precisely the same restrictions as jargon and has the additional disadvantage, for the serious writer’s purposes, of being meant to be racy and elliptical. Slang in more general use also dates rapidly.
The difference in the degree of formality of words with roughly the same meaning can also be shown by means of a table such as the following (although there is always a degree of subjectivity in how particular words are allotted to particular categories):
Standard |
Informal |
Slang |
|
affray |
brawl, set-to |
punch-up, scrap |
|
bemuse, confound |
baffle, puzzle |
bamboozle, flummox |
do one’s head in |
dentition |
teeth |
choppers, gnashers |
|
deranged |
mad |
loony |
barking |
devotee |
fan |
buff, fiend |
nut |
dissipate |
squander |
blow |
|
impecunious |
poor |
broke, stony |
skint |
inferior |
bad, poor |
useless, no good |
pants |
motor car |
car |
limo, wheels |
|
reside, dwell |
live |
hang out |
|
umbrella |
brolly |
gamp (old) |
|
unintelligent |
stupid |
dense, dim, thick |
out to lunch, a brick a brick |
One simple way of introducing vigour into writing is to make a deliberate effort to choose emphatic and colourful words in contrast to quieter and more run-of-the-mill words. For example:
The sea was very rough and Jan was seasick all the way.
seems rather tame compared with:
The ship was tossed about by enormous waves and Jan spent the whole crossing throwing up over the rail.
Similarly:
The atmosphere at the meeting was very noisy and unfriendly so that the chairman eventually left.
might seem to understate the event, whereas:
There was such a tremendous uproar and the atmosphere became so hostile that the chairman eventually walked out.
gives a clearer idea of the fact that there were strong feelings on both sides.
There is nothing wrong in – indeed there is a great deal to be said for – giving vividness and an air of excitement to a description where appropriate. The general rules still apply. The simple, direct, and specific words are more effective, generally speaking, than the vague and generalized ones. If you write that unless particular action is taken ‘people may die’, it is more likely to concentrate the reader’s mind than if you write ‘fatalities may follow’. The important thing is that the goods should live up to the packaging. It is one thing to do justice to the significance or excitement of an event, another to enliven something mundane and ordinary by describing it as if it were epoch-making: Another triumph for people power – cracked paving stone replaced outside post office. In other words, there is seldom a case for ‘writing up something’ – deliberately making it seem grand, important, and exciting by describing it in over-colourful or pretentious prose.
There is, however, a distinction to be made between vivid and exciting language and emotive language. The New Penguin English Dictionary defines ‘emotive’ as ‘arousing or appealing to emotion, esp as opposed to reason’. Language that carries an in-built emotional charge and is intended to create a corresponding emotional response in the reader is a vital asset in many kinds of writing. If you are writing in order to persuade, encourage, warn, or reprimand someone, then you need to find words that are strong enough to spark the appropriate feeling. But, because it is meant to sway the reader’s emotions, emotive language implies a judgment of some kind. There is a difference, for example, between describing someone as a servant and describing that same person as a flunkey, lackey, underling, or a retainer. The first is a fairly neutral term describing someone’s job and status. The next three all have negative associations of one kind or another. Flunkey implies a servant looking faintly ridiculous in a fancy uniform, lackey a servant who fetches and carries in a servile way, while underling strongly suggests the lowness and inferiority of the person concerned. If, on the other hand, you refer to a servant as a retainer, the word conjures up a far more positive and dignified image.
It is always important to be aware of the undertones or overtones that a particular word conveys. You may not necessarily want to suggest approval or disapproval of a person or thing merely by your choice of a word to describe them. There are varieties of writing in which it is vital not to prejudge the issues and to maintain a neutral stance. Sometimes it is very difficult to find the inoffensive middle way without slipping into banality. The laudable side of the movement for political correctness (itself now anything but a neutral term) lay in its efforts to find neutral or positive terms for people who felt that the existing ones carried demeaning or offensive associations. But those efforts have not been entirely successful. (For more on this subject, see pp. 131–4 ‘Sexism and discrimination in language’ in chapter 3.)
This particular difficulty – finding the neutral way of expressing things – is by no means confined to those areas of life which involve considerations of political correctness. There are several ways, for example, in which you might describe the actions of someone who did not want to pay any more tax than was absolutely necessary. You might say that he or she was trying to avoid (paying) tax or evade (paying) tax or get round having to pay tax or get out of having to pay tax. Of these four (the first two more formal, the second two more informal) the last three all suggest varying degrees of dishonesty or a possible unwillingness to comply with a civic duty. If you said that someone was trying to wriggle out of paying tax the suggestion of undignified and dubious behaviour would be even stronger. Using any of these forms of words might prejudice the upright citizen reader to some extent against the person whose activities were being described. This might be your intention. If it was not, then you would have to find a neutral form of words (avoid, not pay) that suited the purpose.
Here are some more emotive terms contrasted with their more neutral equivalents:
Emotive |
Neutral |
axe |
cancel, omit, remove |
bizarre |
odd, uncommon, unusual |
blast |
criticize |
blunder |
mistake |
boost |
encourage, improve, increase |
bungle |
make a mistake, mishandle |
clash |
argument (argue), dispute, quarrel |
covert |
confidential, private, secret |
crony |
associate, friend |
cut |
lessen, reduce |
devastated |
sad, saddened |
dump |
drop, leave out, omit |
fanatic |
enthusiast, devotee |
feeble |
weak, inadequate |
fury |
dissent, opposition |
gaffe |
lapse, mistake |
immense |
great, large |
magnate, mogul |
businessman, industrialist |
moan |
complain |
outrageous |
unfair, unreasonable |
plummet, plunge |
decrease, drop, fall |
poverty-stricken |
poor, hard-up |
rocket |
increase, rise |
rubbish, trash |
waste, nonsense |
slash |
lower, reduce |
soar |
increase, rise |
split |
disagree; disagreement |
storm |
controversy, dispute |
terrific |
excellent, outstanding; large; intense |
thrash, trounce |
beat, defeat |
Most of the words in the emotive column are shorter and simpler, as well as punchier, than their equivalents. Although the general rule is to choose the simpler word, there has to be an element of balance in all things. If your purpose is to remain strictly objective, then the simpler word may occasionally have to be passed over in favour of a slightly longer and less colourful one.
But questions of emotion and neutrality are not confined to the matter of individual word choice. They also relate to the broader topic of tone.
Tone in writing is approximately equivalent to tone of voice; the same words said with different voice inflections can sound serious or ironic, calm or anxious, encouraging or off-putting. Tone also conveys the attitude of a writer or speaker both towards the subject that he or she is writing or speaking about and towards the reader or listener. Tone, in writing as in speaking, can be respectful or rude, friendly or distant, approving or disapproving. But, as was said at the beginning of chapter 7, in writing all that you have to communicate with are marks on paper: the tone has to be deducible from what is on the page.
It is possible to describe tone directly:
‘Give me that book,’ she said threateningly.
I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the worst crisis the country has faced since the Second World War.
More often than not, however, tone is conveyed by choice of words. The following all express roughly the same meaning:
In the event of fire leave the building at once by the nearest exit.
If there is a fire, get out of the building as fast as you can using any exit.
If you hear the fire alarm, run like hell.
But each sentence expresses the meaning in different tones and with various degrees of formality, so implying slightly different relationships between message-giver and message-recipient. Choosing informal words and constructions automatically implies a fairly relaxed attitude to your subject and some familiarity with the person you are writing to. Choosing to use jargon implies, or should imply, that you take the reader to be on a roughly equal footing with yourself, a fellow professional or enthusiast. Adopting a formal approach signifies greater distance, and for a great deal of functional writing a fairly formal tone is normally required.
The previous paragraph talks about the writer ‘choosing’ or ‘adopting’ a tone. This might suggest that it was possible not to do so, that tonelessness was an option. It is not. No writing is – nor should it be – toneless. There is such a thing as a ‘neutral tone’, in which emotive words of the kind discussed in the preceding section are studiously avoided, and an ‘impersonal tone’, the advantages and disadvantages of which will be discussed on pp. 219–21, but these are not default options. If you follow your own ‘inner voice’, the words still come out in some tone or other, probably a fairly conventional one coloured by your attitude to the subject and the person you are writing to.
Tone is one more aspect for the writer to be concerned with: it is a further weapon in the writer’s armoury. Giving no thought to this aspect of the task simply means that your tone is left to chance. It is much better to make a deliberate choice. The right tone is the one that suits the subject matter, your feelings towards it, and the relationship between you and the person you are writing for. On that basis you can decide to be more or less formal, more or less approving, more or less personal, and adjust your word choice and sentence construction accordingly.
This can be expressed in another way. If, as a writer, you are unsure of your tone, how is the reader to know how to take your message? There is nothing worse for a reader than to be uncertain how to respond: is he really angry with me?; is she joking?; are they really going to take us to court or are they bluffing? The possibility that people will read something into what you have written which was never intended to be there can never be ruled out, of course. It is also possible that as a writer you might want to keep your reader guessing. Generally speaking, however, clarity demands that you decide on a particular tone and then remain with it.
Consistency is important. It does not work to lurch from the formal to the informal and back again:
We will not tolerate any interference in our private affairs. Get that?
Any more of your meddling and we shall he obliged to take legal action to secure our rights.
Either remain on the higher level:
We will not tolerate any interference in our private affairs. Be warned: if there is any further interference we shall be obliged to take legal action to secure our rights.
Or pitch the whole thing in a different key:
Keep out of our affairs. Get that? Any more meddling and you’ll end up in court.
It is more difficult to sustain a tone that is at odds with your natural way of communicating. Be aware of that before embarking on anything too lofty and impersonal. For general purposes a tone and use of language based on your natural voice and vocabulary is the best and the easiest to maintain at a constant level.
A good deal of functional writing, as has been said, requires a fairly formal tone. Not perhaps as formal as was the norm in the past, but nonetheless not chatty. Some people believe that the best way of achieving the degree of formality, neutrality, and objectivity required by, say, commercial or academic writing is to make what they write as impersonal as possible. If they avoid directly suggesting that the ideas they are putting forward are their own, or are indeed attributable to any particular person or group, then they feel that either gives the ideas extra weight or cleanses them from the dross of subjectivity. The commonest way of doing this is to put verbs into the passive and to begin sentences with it or there:
It might be thought that…
It is sometimes argued that…
There are grounds for believing that…
On the whole, however, this is not a good idea. There are few advantages and many disadvantages in avoiding personalities, and especially in avoiding the use of a personal pronoun (I, you, we, etc.) as the subject of a sentence. (Active and passive verbs will be discussed in the next section.) A good many years ago now, the Inland Revenue in Britain changed its style and began to write, for example:
I will send you my calculation of your tax if you have asked the Inland Revenue to do it for you.
In previous years it might have written something along the lines of
A calculation of the tax owing will be sent to taxpayers who have requested the Inland Revenue to make such a calculation.
It is not clear whom the I refers to on a modern tax form, but the majority of people feel more comfortable about being involved in an apparently personal dialogue between an I and a you, than they would be about being caught up in the definitely impersonal interaction between the Inland Revenue and taxpayers. And this is generally the case. It is better to use personal pronouns and, if you are stating your own position, to use I rather than to write a great many words attempting to avoid doing so. This means that:
I believe the situation to be serious and advise you to take immediate action.
should usually be preferred to:
The situation is serious, in my opinion, and my advice is that immediate action should be taken.
There is an old and generally sound warning against beginning too many sentences with I. It is apt to make the writer sound too full of himself or herself. It is better to take corrective action by varying the construction of sentences than by abandoning the first person altogether. Instead of:
I have considered the evidence carefully. I think disciplinary action is called for. I am writing to the managing director. I expect to have his reply by Thursday.
you could write:
Having considered the evidence carefully, I think disciplinary action is called for. I am writing to the managing director and expect his reply by Thursday.
This is much more effective than trying to depersonalize the sentences:
The evidence has been carefully considered and there seems to be grounds for disciplinary action. The managing director has been informed by letter and his reply is expected on Thursday.
Two further points: it is best not to use we if you mean I. If something is being written by an individual on behalf of a group, then it is appropriate to use we:
The committee appreciate your difficulties and will make allowances for them. We nevertheless expect the work to be finished on time.
Otherwise it should be avoided. Likewise, one is a useful way of generalizing something without having to resort to too many passive verbs, though in the long run it can sound pompous or affected:
One finds oneself wishing one had thought of that oneself.
Using you is perfectly acceptable in most cases.
The hinge of a sentence is its verb. Chapter 1 of this book explains how verbs can be used not only in different tenses, but in what are known as the active and the passive voice (see pp. 46–7). An active verb is one in which the subject of the sentence carries out the action in question:
The boy broke a window.
The newspaper published the story.
When a verb is passive, the subject is affected by an action – it does not do something, it has something done to it. The passive forms of the examples given above would read:
The window was broken by the boy.
The story was published by the newspaper.
This much is grammar. As far as style is concerned, the general recommendation is that writers should prefer active verbs to passive ones on the grounds of directness and vigour. Sentences containing active verbs are shorter and more direct than ones with passive verbs. The passive voice tends to make everything impersonal and general:
A crime has been committed by a person or persons unknown.
This could be taken as a classic instance of the use of the passive voice: there has been a crime, and everyone is still in the dark about the perpetrator. But, generally, it is better to attribute an opinion to someone – in other words to provide an active subject for the sentence and put the verb into the active voice – than to leave things entirely open. If you use the passive and omit to mention who actually carried out the action in question, you are depriving the reader of information.
Take, for example, the sentences from the previous section (p. 220):
The evidence has been carefully considered and there seems to be grounds for disciplinary action. The managing director has been informed by letter and his reply is expected on Thursday.
All the actions seem to have taken place by magic or as if some inevitable process were working itself out. If the writer is not the person who examined the evidence, there seems to be no reason for not indicating who did.
The committee [or ‘board’ or ‘assessors’, etc.] have examined the evidence and there seems to be grounds for disciplinary action. They have written to the managing director and his reply is expected by Thursday.
This both provides information that the reader might legitimately need and makes for a clearer and more robust text.
This is not to say that the passive form should or can be avoided altogether. In some cases it may be desirable to give prominence to someone or something that has been the target or victim of a particular action. In such cases the sentence can begin with the thing or person:
The car, which had been stolen the previous week, was later used by ram-raiders and abandoned at the scene of the crime.
There would be no point in trying to recast that sentence into the active mode unless you wanted to shift the emphasis away from the vehicle and talk instead about the thieves.
I got into my bones the essential structure of the normal British sentence – which is a noble thing
Sir Winston Churchill, My Early Life
For a grammatical description of the essential structure of normal sentences, see the first part of this book where it is described in some detail (pp. 5–6, 12–16). The concern here is to try to deal with the question of how to write good sentences within the rules prescribed by grammar.
A sentence is ‘a unit of language that makes sense and is complete in itself’. It may consist of a single word; it may contain a hundred words or more. It generally has a main verb. The important thing is that it should be complete in itself – and, to be an altogether satisfying and noble thing, it should have a rhythmic shape that as far as possible matches the completeness of the thought.
There is no optimum length for a sentence. Like most other aspects of writing, a sentence should be as long or as short as it needs to be to fulfil the purpose for which it was intended. Most authorities suggest that shorter sentences should be preferred to longer ones. It is sometimes suggested that an average length for sentences should be around fifteen to twenty words. But that is only a recommended average. There is no point in meticulously counting words and struggling to fit everything into fifteen-to-twenty-word units. The principle of variety needs to be remembered here. It is good not to keep to the same sentence length, because remaining with a single pattern can be monotonous. Unless there is some reason why the writer has to keep things very simple, the occasional long sentence, as long as it is clearly thought out and logically structured, need not put undue strain on the reader’s powers of concentration and understanding. Short sentences generate a fast pace. They give a sense of urgency. They can snap a reader back to attention. They are easy to keep under control. But a succession of simple statements of ten words or less can become as boring as long sentences that spin their thread too finely and straggle away into nothingness. Sentences of varying length are most satisfying for both writer and reader.
Having said that, however, it is still appropriate to recommend special care when your sentences are at the longer end of the spectrum. The following, taken from a book on perception, is not untypical of what can happen as sentences start to draw out:
The message was plain. There must exist an additional level of understanding at which the character of the information-processing tasks carried out during perception are analysed and understood in a way that is independent of the particular mechanisms and structures that implement them in our heads.
Marr, D. (1982) Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information: San Francisco, Freeman, cited in Gregory, R., Harris, J., Heard, P., and Rose, D. eds. (1995) The Artful Eye Oxford University Press, p. 9.
The message, unfortunately, is anything but plain – although, admittedly, the subject under discussion is a very complex one. What quite often happens when sentences get longer and more complicated is that writers lose touch with the early part of the sentence and are drawn into grammatical errors. In this instance the writer seems to have forgotten that ‘character’ is the subject of the first subordinate clause beginning ‘at which’ and has used a plural verb instead of a singular one:… the character… are analysed and understood. This can easily occur when a phrase such as ‘the character of the information-processing tasks’ is used; you latch on to the plural ‘tasks’ as the most important word, losing sight of the fact that it is grammatically dependent on the singular word ‘character’.
It probably does not help either that having used ‘carry out’ in the first subordinate clause, the writer does not feel able to use it again in the third and uses the slightly more technical word ‘implement’ that has essentially the same meaning. The result is that it is not immediately clear that the phrase ‘that implement them’ refers back to ‘the information-processing tasks’. The sentence would probably be a lot clearer to the lay person if it were restructured and split in two:
The message was plain. An additional level of understanding must exist at which the information-processing tasks carried out during perception are analysed and their character is understood. Such a level of understanding must operate independently of the mechanisms and structures that actually carry out those tasks in our heads.
It is good to avoid repetition, but it is better to repeat words or phrases than to be unclear.
One of the main tasks of someone who is revising a piece of written work is to work on his or her sentences as sentences, in addition to checking over the individual words that make them up. Some sentences will need lengthening, some shortening. You should never be afraid either to run what first came out as two separate sentences together into a single unit, or to break down what was drafted as one long continuous sentence into two or more shorter ones. To take an example. Imagine that someone has to write a short letter or memorandum, has made notes of what he or she wants to say, converts those notes into sentences and puts them in the correct order. The initial result looks like this:
Janet has volunteered to make the bookings for the whole party. She says that she can do that on the Internet. That means that she will have to pay for the tickets by credit card. She is perfectly willing to do that. We all have to pay her back, of course. She would much prefer it if we did this before the end of the month. She does not want to run up any interest charges on her card. Could you please send her a cheque for £32. She does not want cash.
All the relevant information is there, written down in grammatically correct sentences. But the whole thing reads extremely choppily and simplistically. What can be done to improve matters? The answer is to make three or four longer sentences out of the existing nine short ones. The fact that so many of the nine have the same subject (Janet or she) also indicates that some economizing can be done.
There are three main elements in the message: what Janet has volunteered to do; what ‘we’ have to do; Janet’s wishes regarding how she is to be paid back. The passage could then be recast in three sentences, if possible, devoting one sentence to each idea:
Janet has volunteered to make the bookings for the whole party, which she can do on the Internet, and she is perfectly willing to pay by credit card. We have to pay her back, of course, so please send her a cheque for £32 before the end of the month. She needs to be paid before the end of the month to avoid interest charges on her credit card and she does not want cash.
There is some improvement here, especially in the first sentence. The redundant and clumsy ‘she says that’ and ‘that means that’ have been removed. You could cut the sentence down still further if you felt that the little salute to Janet (‘perfectly willing’) was unnecessary: ‘Janet has volunteered to make the bookings for the whole party over the Internet and pay by credit card.’ The second and third sentences are not so successful. In trying to express the three main ideas in order, the sequence of events seems slightly wrong. As a result the third sentence now begins with an explanatory ‘She needs… to avoid paying interest charges’.
Adopting a more businesslike tone would mean removing: ‘We have to pay her back, of course’. It goes without saying that we will pay her back, so why bother to say it? All the person directly addressed has to do is to send a cheque for £32 before the end of the month. What we as a group have to do is obvious. On that basis, the final version can be reduced to:
Janet has volunteered to make the bookings for the whole party over the Internet and pay by credit card. Please send her a cheque for £32 before the end of the month so that she does not have to pay interest charges. She does not want cash.
If that for any reason seems too businesslike, it could be revised slightly along the following lines:
Janet has volunteered to make the bookings for the whole party over the Internet and is perfectly willing to pay by credit card. We each owe her £32, which she would like before the end of the month so that she does not have to pay interest charges. Please send her a cheque as she does not want cash.
It can as easily happen, however, that one’s first draft comes out not in short choppy sentences but in a long and slightly breathless ramble. For example:
The results of the survey clearly show that, far from being on the decline, small-business start-ups are actually on the increase and have been so since well before the present government took office in 1997, suggesting either that the economic climate has been particularly favourable to small-scale enterprise since the mid-nineties, especially with the growth of home and teleworking aided by computer technology and increasing access to the Internet, or that the break-up of or lay-offs from larger companies have compelled individuals and small groups to seek their salvation in small-scale enterprises, the data can be interpreted either way.
This is the sort of sentence that brings a modern word-processing program out in a rash of jagged underlining. The sentence never becomes totally incomprehensible, but by the end the writer has lost touch with the starting-out point and despairingly reaches back for it in the final clause. Here the sentence needs to be broken down into smaller units. What are the elements of the existing sentence? A survey has been carried out and its results, according to the writer, can be interpreted in two ways. Small-business start-ups are increasing not declining. This is either because the economic climate is favourable to small business or because big business is declining. The existing material could be expressed in three sentences:
The results of the survey are clear, but they can be interpreted in two different ways. They clearly show that, far from being on the decline, small-business start-ups are actually on the increase and have been so since well before the present government took office in 1997. This may indicate that the economic climate has been particularly favourable to small-scale enterprise since the mid-nineties, especially with the growth of home and teleworking aided by computer technology and increasing access to the Internet, or, alternatively, that the break-up of or lay-offs from larger companies have compelled individuals and small groups to seek their salvation in small-scale enterprises.
The improvements made so far are small. In particular, the last sentence is still too long and really needs breaking in half:
This may indicate that the economic climate has been particularly favourable to small-scale enterprise since the mid-nineties, especially since computer technology and increasing access to the Internet have assisted the growth of home- and teleworking. Alternatively, the fact that larger companies have broken up and laid off employees may have compelled individuals and small groups to seek their salvation by going it alone.
This is considerably better, especially since the awkward phrases such as ‘the break-up of or lay-offs from’ have been tidied up. That leaves the first two sentences of the second version, which were far from satisfactory since a repetition of ‘clear’ had crept in (The results… are clear… They clearly show…). A little juggling can improve matters:
The results of the survey clearly show that, far from being on the decline, small-business start-ups are actually on the increase and have been since well before the present government took office in 1997. This may indicate that the economic climate has been particularly favourable to small-scale enterprise since the mid-nineties, especially as computer technology and increasing access to the Internet have assisted the growth of home- and teleworking. Alternatively, the fact that larger companies have broken up or laid off employees may have compelled individuals and small groups to seek their salvation by going it alone. The data could be interpreted either way.
The ‘third draft’ has in some respects returned to the format of the first. Once the afterthought has been raised to the level of a complete sentence and the intervening structure has been clarified, there is no longer a feeling that the writer is desperately reaching backwards to get in touch with the original subject of the sentence. One unit has become four and the whole thing reads much more easily and elegantly.
The sentence from Winston Churchill used at the beginning of this section notes that he got the structure of the sentence ‘into his bones’. This is a telling phrase. It suggests that through diligent reading and writing he internalized a sense of what constitutes good style; it became a matter of instinctive feel. A feeling for the rhythm of prose sentences is precisely that, a feeling, an instinct. It can be acquired, but it is difficult to learn.
Good prose has a rhythm, like poetry. Unlike most poetry, it does not have a regular repeated rhythm. It should have a rhythm of a subtler, less obtrusive kind; it is made up of a satisfying sequence of longer and shorter, emphatic and less emphatic words and syllables. Here is a sentence of poetic prose, but nonetheless prose, by James Joyce:
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
James Joyce, Dubliners: ‘The Dead’
It uses alliteration (soul, swooned, slowly) like poetry. It uses a phrase (His soul swooned slowly) that is almost impossible to say fast because of its s sounds and long vowels to establish a slow pace. Although the sentence is made up of short words, its mood is hushed and sombre, its rhythm being calculated to bring it, and indeed the whole story from which it comes, to a quiet end.
Here, by contrast, are two definitely unpoetic sentences by George Orwell:
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.
George Orwell, The Sporting Spirit
Orwell is intending to say something unconventional and rather shocking. The first sentence briefly states his main idea. It does not end on a falling tone. The second sentence picks up the idea and quickly builds tension by placing four emphatic nouns one after the other: ‘hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard…’ with no small words in between. The effect is, almost literally, like someone hammering the point home. The tension is partly released by allowing a few small words in before the semicolon is reached. What the sentence now needs is something neat and original to finish it off – it is war minus the shooting. Orwell’s intention was to shock. Had he used more words ‘it is war waged without weapons and with comparatively little letting of blood’, for instance, the force of the thought and the sentence would have been dissipated.
Rhythm need not be confined to literary prose. As you gain experience as a writer, sensitivity to rhythm can help you to detect whether ordinary sentences work well or not. A sentence such as:
One of the most attractive things about South Africa is the fact that it has such a variety of different scenery.
has a kind of stutter in the middle because so many short words follow one immediately after the other. This would be very evident if it were read aloud. Cutting it down makes it run much more smoothly:
One of the most attractive things about South Africa is the variety of its scenery.
Conversely, a sentence such as this (from a record club catalogue) is rhythmically as well as grammatically slack:
This remastered recording is amazing for its clarity and impressive performances of the soloists and tightness of the orchestra.
Putting in commas and slightly breaking the flow makes a definite improvement:
This remastered recording is amazing for its clarity, the impressive performances of its soloists, and the tightness of the orchestra.
Nobody, it would seem, has yet spoken of the English paragraph as a noble thing. The construction of paragraphs, unlike that of sentences, is not governed by grammatical rules. Nevertheless, paragraphing is a vital element in the preparation of a piece of writing. The space between paragraphs is like a mental intake of breath. To read a continuous series of sentences with nothing to interrupt the current would be a little like speaking without ever pausing to breathe. The end of a paragraph provides a place at which the reader can, if he or she wishes or needs to, take a pause for thought.
A paragraph should contain the material for a thought – a sentence or, more often, a group of sentences that encapsulate one idea. It may be an idea that forms part of the development of a larger theme or that is merely one of a sequence. The rule of thumb is one idea, one paragraph.
Another way of looking at the paragraph might be to say that it is a sentence writ large. A sentence is a sequence of words making up a statement or question that is complete in itself; a paragraph is a sequence of sentences making up a longer statement that is also complete in itself. What was said about the length of sentences is equally valid for the length of paragraphs. There is no set length. It is usual to have two, three, or four paragraphs per page in a serious discursive work. But shorter paragraphs, like shorter sentences, produce a less dense texture, a faster pace and a simpler read. Tabloid newspapers, for example, frequently use one-sentence paragraphs. Paragraphs too can possess a kind of rhythm, though this is even more difficult to exemplify and analyse than the rhythm of sentences.
The words spoken by each speaker in a dialogue should be placed in a separate paragraph. In other words, the rule for dialogue is: one speaker, one paragraph:
‘I am Leutnant Günter Weber, with the Grenadiers at Lixouri. I saw your party, and I thought that I would come and introduce myself.’
‘Ah,’ said Carlo, winking, ‘you wanted to come and look at the women.’
‘It is no such thing,’ lied Weber stiffly. ‘Naturally one has seen such things before.’
‘I am Antonio Corelli,’ said the captain, ‘and naturally, one cannot see enough of such things if one is a man.’
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
For more on the use of quotation marks and paragraphs, see p. 163.
When planning a piece of writing, especially a comparatively short one, it is best to draw up the plan on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. If, nevertheless, you get carried away while writing a first draft and produce a large block of undifferentiated text, how should you go about dividing it up into paragraphs? Here, as an example, are two pieces of unparagraphed text dashed off by the authors.
The first is written in a fairly light style, so the obvious thing to do is to put it into relatively short paragraphs:
The idea of being able to travel through time has stirred the human imagination for centuries. Now, at last, the possibility has become a virtual reality. The means of achieving a transfer back to a previous age is not, however, the bullet-shaped machine of science fiction that whisks the intrepid voyager through the years at twice the speed of light. Instead, it is a room in the Department of Teletransportation at the University of San Miguel in southern California. The room is the brainchild of the head of the Department of Teletransportation, Professor Stanislaus Poniatowski, familiarly known as ‘Scottie’. Building on techniques used in the film industry that enable real-life actors to appear in old newsreels apparently interacting with historical figures – remember Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump showing his injured backside to President Lyndon B. Johnson – Professor Poniatowski and his dedicated band of researchers and technicians have created a virtual-reality environment known as Watergateworld 73. Using security-camera footage from inside the White House together with some of the notorious sound tapes from the period and computer enhancement, the environment re-creates the Oval Office as it was in the early days of President Richard M. Nixon’s second term. More amazingly still, it allows time-travellers to hold conversations with President Nixon and members of his administration and staff in what Professor Poniatowski calls ‘apparent historical time’. ‘We think of this primarily as a tool for historians,’ he says, ‘but realize that it may have commercial potential as well.’ He denies, however, that he and his staff are currently working on the construction of a second and similar environment focused on the days of the Clinton administration to be known as ‘Monicaworld’.
Working according to the rule one idea, one paragraph, the first task is to identify the sequence of thoughts on which the passage is built. It starts by introducing the topic in a general way and the pun on Virtual reality’ at the end of the second sentence provides an obvious first stopping place. The actual subject of the piece is then introduced and the creator of the device is identified. These are two separate operations and so demand two short paragraphs. The next three sentences describe what the device does. It would be reasonable to put them together into one paragraph, although in a tabloid newspaper they might each appear separately. Professor Poniatowski’s actual words should be highlighted by being placed in a paragraph of their own. This leaves us with a final paragraph containing the one remaining sentence. The end result looks like this:
The idea of being able to travel through time has stirred the human imagination for centuries. Now, at last, the possibility has become a virtual reality.
The means of achieving a transfer back to a previous age is not, however, the bullet-shaped machine of science fiction that whisks the intrepid voyager through the years at twice the speed of light. Instead, it is a room in the Department of Teletransportation at the University of San Miguel in southern California.
The room is the brainchild of the head of the Department of Teletransportation, Professor Stanislaus Poniatowski, familiarly known as ‘Scottie’.
Building on techniques used in the film industry that enable real-life actors to appear in old newsreels apparently interacting with historical figures – remember Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump showing his injured backside to President Lyndon B. Johnson – Professor Poniatowski and his dedicated band of researchers and technicians have created a virtual-reality environment known as Watergateworld 73. Using security-camera footage from inside the White House together with some of the notorious sound tapes from the period and computer enhancement, the environment re-creates the Oval Office as it was in the early days of President Richard M. Nixon’s second term. More amazingly still, it allows time-travellers to hold conversations with President Nixon and members of his administration and staff in what Professor Poniatowski calls ‘apparent historical time’.
‘We think of this primarily as a tool for historians,’ he says, ‘but realize that it may have commercial potential as well.’
He denies, however, that he and his staff are currently working on the construction of a second and similar environment focused on the days of the Clinton administration to be known as ‘Monicaworld’.
The next example, however, demonstrates a slightly more complicated editorial task. The block of text has been deliberately disorganized and some redundant and repetitious material has been added so that, as often in real life, the task of paragraphing becomes part of the more general task of organizing the material. Dividing up the text goes hand in hand here with deciding what to retain, what to do away with, and what to add.
Set between steep escarpments rising on either side of the River Avon, Bath is rapidly becoming the victim of its own geography. It is impossible to build a bypass around it. Not that anyone could seriously contemplate building a bypass through the lovely landscapes and quaint villages that surround the city. If ever a city cried out to be extensively pedestrianized, that city is Bath, which is a major British tourist attraction and a World Heritage Site. A beautiful and unique urban environment, it deserves to be enjoyed by visitors and residents alike in leisurely tranquillity. But heavy local traffic mingles with a continuous stream of through traffic close to the city centre and congestion is a frequent problem. The local council has yet to seriously grapple with that problem. Some argue that pedestrianization would kill off business in the city centre, but others, like former local councillor Gilbert Strick MBE, cite evidence from other European cities to show that the provision of a safe, pollution-free central area freed from the stress of traffic actually increases trade.
What the passage seems to suffer from is a lack of focus. The fact that it begins with references to the geography of Bath and its surroundings detracts somewhat from its main theme: the question of whether pedestrianization of the city centre would be beneficial. That this is the basic subject is suggested by the reference to the council and to the conflicting opinions on whether pedestrianization would harm the city’s trade. The city’s environment contributes to the traffic problem because the beautiful, hilly surroundings prevent a bypass being built. But that is a subordinate point.
Roughly reorganizing the text on that basis, and giving the main subject prominence by announcing it in the opening paragraph, would result in something like the following:
If ever a city cried out to be extensively pedestrianized, that city is Bath, which is a major British tourist attraction and a World Heritage Site. A beautiful and unique urban environment, it deserves to be enjoyed by visitors and residents alike in leisurely tranquillity. But heavy local traffic mingles with a continuous stream of through traffic close to the city centre and congestion is a frequent problem.
Bath is the victim of its own geography. The steep escarpments rising on either side of the River Avon have made it impossible to build a bypass. Not that anyone would contemplate building a bypass through the lovely landscapes and quaint villages that surround the city.
The local council has yet to seriously grapple with the problem. Some argue that pedestrianization would kill off business in the city centre, but others, like former local councillor Gilbert Strick MBE, cite evidence from other European cities to show that the provision of a safe, pollution-free central area freed from the stress of traffic actually increases trade.
This is a definite improvement, but still leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, it does not explicitly state that traffic is what is spoiling the ‘leisurely tranquillity’. With a sentence to that effect added, a little pruning, and some general tidying up, the passage might read:
If ever a city cried out to be extensively pedestrianized, that city is Bath. Its beautiful and unique urban environment has made it a major British tourist attraction and a World Heritage Site. It deserves to be enjoyed by visitors and residents alike in leisurely tranquillity. This is impossible while its elegant streets are clogged by traffic.
Bath’s geography is partly to blame. The steep escarpments rising on either side of the River Avon, together with the lovely landscapes and quaint villages that surround the city, make it almost impossible to build a bypass. As a result, a continuous stream of through traffic mingles with heavy local traffic close to the city centre, frequently causing serious congestion.
The local council has yet to seriously grapple with the problem. Some people argue that pedestrianization would kill off business in the city centre. But many, like former local councillor Gilbert Strick MBE, cite evidence from other European cities to show that the provision of a safe, pollution-free central area freed from the stress of traffic actually increases trade.
Each paragraph now begins with what is often called a ‘topic sentence’, a sentence that briefly announces the subject of the paragraph. A reader who was really pressed for time could read the first sentence of each paragraph in a passage like this and get the gist of the whole.
If you follow the method adopted in these last two examples, that of first identifying the sequence of ideas in a passage or the most appropriate sequence of ideas for a passage, then topic sentences will usually suggest themselves quite easily. If topic sentences are appropriate, and they often are, they also serve as markers to the writer, indicating what the paragraph is about and, therefore, what belongs inside the paragraph and what does not.
The overall aim is clarity: this point cannot be emphasized too much. Clarity in paragraph division assists in achieving clarity in sentence structure and word choice. But finding the right words in a particular context makes it much easier to shape sentences and paragraphs. Some people find it easier to begin their revision by concentrating closely on the individual words. Other people work on the principle that if you look after the paragraphs, the sentences will look after themselves. Each individual needs to discover the method that suits him or her best. The important thing is to consider every aspect, in turn or simultaneously, giving equal attention both to the larger structures that shape the piece of writing and to the smaller units that in the end determine its meaning and tone.